Realm of Randomness ..

Quick thoughts

These days i am going through some wonderful experiences. Major chunk for this: I have the routine in Bangalore broken. I was fed up with the same life style. Same road. Same bus. Same timings. Same place. Same updates. Same people. And even same dogs!

Life at Australia has given me that chance to break the shackles with usuality. The life has changed and so have people, places around me. I am not a pleasure freak. The only thing I ask for is the change. For that matter I do not even mind spending my days at a village as long as I get a break from usual casualties of life.

Casualties they are. Each moment each day life throws loads and loads of experiences at you. Some are feather soft. Providing you with the feel-good comfort in its zone. And then there are those emotion laden heavy experiences trying to crush you under it’s weight. Casualties to your mind is what they can leave behind. And casualties is what they leave behind.

So the break was indeed welcome. It has indeed been welcome. For the better part of this change is the feeling of differentness. But this same “differentness” is what pops up in between; a small compartment in mind still calls out for those same buses. Those same roads. Those same people. And those same dogs. In between some times a thought does crawl in the mind; a thought calling out for those “usualities“. Calling out loud for the sameness in the life.

by Amit Gawande Tags: general, life | Posted in instant thoughts, life

One Fine Morning…

Incidents wait for a perfect time to pounce on you, especially the bad ones. One such incident pounced on him too. One fine morning, it was.

Alike any normal day, he woke fully throttled up, with a hope for fruitful work at office. He rushed through the daily chores, preparing himself for the regular grinding sessions. However there was a tinge of excitement within him today. Surprised as he was with his full on enthu to reach office, a thought brushed his mind, ” something new, something good is about to happen today”. He knew today was, in someway, special.

He jumped into the office bus, just to get further surprised. Usually crowded, the bus welcomed him today to free spaces. He chose the best among the window seats. Clouds had already swarmed the Bangalore skies, further elevating his pleasant mood. “Something is surely in the air today”, he thought.

Whole day he yearned for the change he was sensing from the morning. However except for the persistent clouds, nothing indeed was pleasing him. He had a pretty workless day, which he hardly abhorred. But something was missing. He knew that, he felt that.

And then, on the verge of he giving up on any hope for the welcome change, it loomed, loomed through the hazy weather. He was introduced to the One. He was informed that One would be bossing him now onwards. The first few sentences from the One and he knew this was the change he has been desiring for. Fully impressed he was with the One’s fluent and vast knowledge flow. Fully impressed he was with the One’s sensitiveness for a person’s goals. Fully impressed he was with the One’s clarity of thoughts. Fully impressed he was with the One.

Few chats later an invitation was thrown at him, ” Join me for a smoke. Will you?” And that is how it all started. The incident had pounced on him, he though remained unaware. It all started one morning, one fine morning…

PS: All character are fictitious, resemblance to anyone is completely coincidental.

by Amit Gawande Tags: clouds, incident, morning, story | Posted in fiction, life, non-normal

Nothing goes wrong..

I had earlier prated at facebook about how things never go wrong but they usually are wrong. This post is more about the incident that made me babble that out.

This particular incident is not a one off experience. It happens with me most of the time. I have started believing the quote, that one gets what he gets only when the time is right, far strongly than ever before.

So right from the morning today, i was hopelessly beating my head against numerous things interconnected. Code not getting configured, tools not running properly, system slowing down like hell … and what not. In simple terms, all the things that could possibly go wrong were going wrong.

Tried my best to bring things back on track. Even tried the ever successful way out of chanting random rants in the loo. But nothing seamed to work. Day went by with me fighting the villainous time. And suddenly right on the verge of me giving up, something happened and everything got sorted out.

I felt like yash raj was scripting a movie with me, the helpless protagonist waiting for the non-hero-non-villain types neutral time to sort things out, a la Amrish puri in DDLJ. Here ditto Yash Raj’s script, how the solution appears does not matter.

Many times the all time hidden problem creators suddenly loom out of nothingness. Or at times the same components which were adamant on not working get a mind change and start working. You sit there dumbfound trying to grasp what happened. Worse is when all the twisted knots straighten up when a new person pulls a thread, making one look a complete idiot.

By the way today’s was the first case. The bugger emerged from the tonnes of characters and the problem got solved. Time was 7:02pm. Felt i was destined to solve the problem, but not before 7:00pm 28th May.

A new problem, as usual, has come into existence tough. Yashji’s planning a magnum opus this time, i guess. So awaiting another day of head banging for a solution which i know i won’t get before the time gets right.

Nothing actually goes wrong, it is always wrong. What is worth mentioning tough is when it goes right!!

by Amit Gawande Tags: life, problems, solution, time, yash raj | Posted in life, lite

Contemplating my present days..

Another day spent with hardly any interesting updates in life. Truly speaking many things happen. Mind wanders around, surfs over various topics instead of diving deep into a single significant job at hand. Result is i am unable to get attached to any of the things happening around me.

The question arises what really does one need to make the mind notice what is happening around? Interest in what we do should be the first and most important thing. But what I don’t understand is why do i suddenly take raw interest in the same work which i wasn’t enjoying earlier. It must rather be something else .

According to me, they are the things that happen around me that actually decide if i notice what is happening around or not. If my mind feels they are worth noticing, it will notice them. Else it temporarily captures the images just to wipe it off the mind’s canvas, sooner rather than later. The problem is this “sooner” comes too soon for me to make even a slight impact.

Does this mean things around me are insignificant? I don’t thing so. Rather the things around me these days are like the monotonic long silences in Oscar winning movies; they are no way insignificant, however they hardly make any sense to me. I would rather prefer the insignificant, but joyous jabbers of Adam Sandler than Leone’s blunt eye shots. And i need to soon find these jabbers around me!

Update: Just watched this wonderful village lady, Susan Boyle, nailing another awesome of her performance. This lady has provided some thirlls and excitement in waise monotonous life.

Witness yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLLIIb_jA9Y

by Amit Gawande Tags: boringness, life, monotony, self | Posted in instant thoughts, introspection, life

What really is ambition?

Today it happened again. A previous post has had many hits from the Google search. I know there is nothing surprising about this part. But what follows is.

The query type was usually like “My ambition in life” or “My ambition” or “What are my ambitions” or “My plans and ambitions”. One query was also of the sort saying “Why have i lost my ambition”. Instant reaction was like, ok, i know Google does answer your query. But i dearly wish it does not move to this personal level. I dearly wish a day would never come when i would google for “Where have i forgotten my underwear”. I dearly wish i don’t.

But after some time, I thought fare enough. Someone must have searched for an essay with this topic. Afterall even i remember how, during the 2nd -5th standard, my ambition changed with changing teachers and essay books. It mutated from a nation serving politician or soldier to a hard-working-son-of-soil farmer to a life saving doctor. Frankly speaking, considering the level of english i could blabber on my own, the essay that was not lengthy enough not to be mugged up, at the same time sounded good and earned marks had content for “My ambition”. But i don’t remember myself ever scribbling about being a “gibberish-speaking” sleepy bug dwelling in virtual reality, being a computer engineering, i.e., to be specific.

Anyways this fact urged me to think what really is an ambition. I thought of mining the precise definition for the word and to my surprise what it really means is “an ardent desire to achieve something”. An ardent desire? That is it? Boss, i have been ceaselessly told my ambition has to foretell a long time down the future. All those “cheek-bursting” aunts and grandmas and uncles danced on my head for ages to know what i would be when i grow old, what is my ambition. I always doubted if they wanted to boggle the million rupees estate i would have. To such extent was my fear that i started publishing “social service” as my ambition just to push the demons away.

But now i feel pity that i was wandering along without really answering that question in the best way. If an ardent desire is what ambition is all about, then yes i would have had hundreds of ambitions. And the list has grown to a thousands now with passing age. With each ambition i achieved, i feel i have installed few more in the list. I know and still remember the whole gyan about a life lived without ambition is like an arrow fired without an aim. But then if i have to talk practically I feel it is highly impossible to lay the path for whole life right at the birth. Nah one can’t.

And that does not mean as a child i spent my life without an aim. I still had an aim to complete my homework just to rush out to play hide n seek or help mom out with an aim to go out for a walk in some mela or finish every possible household exercises even on a foggy Sunday with an aim just to use that as an excuse while am watching a cricket match. Now i know these were my ambitions. Far more practical than being a politician or a doctor.

Yes i know there are still these whole lot of concepts of long term goal and short term goals and art of living and blah. So I feel skeptic to use ambition as a word. I feel i better call it a simple desire.  I have decided to pursue my billions of small but practical desires under the hood of long term, impractical or rather unverifiable ambition of being a respected and followed both professionally and personally. I have already mentioned how my ambitions faded away with time. I know my desires won’t. I would be happy if the list grows to some tens of thousands, that would imply that i atleast completed 100 such desires. 100 such ambitionsi will call them.

by Amit Gawande Tags: ambition, definition, lost | Posted in life, non-normal, sensible